Visit the Avenue of the Baobabs in Madagascar

“We sat by the lake for a good hour, watching the sun slowly dip behind the enormous trees, while the silhouettes of the majestic baobabs reflected in the lake water, pitch-black in the multicoloured sky. More and more tourists flocked to the Avenue. There were many Japanese tourists, some of them on pilgrimage to see the baobab, believing them to be the sacred Shintoist sakaki trees. However, even at full capacity, the place was still wonderfully quiet, with perhaps a hundred tourists in total. After the sunset, the sky was coloured with a thousand shades of pink and purple for short while. A tropical sunset, as intense as it is brief. Then, it was pitch black. A darkness that I had never experienced before, Madagascar, where street lights are few and far between, and you can sometimes see the Milky Way even in cities. When we left, the baobabs were nowhere to be seen.”

“I have to admit, after a very long day hiking around the reserve and then waiting around for 3 hours in the heat of the day for the temperatures to cool down, I was quite ready to skip the sunset and go straight back to my gorgeous bungalow in the Palissandre Hotel. We had already stopped to see the ‘Sacred Baobab’ and the ‘Lover Baobab’ and by this point I was a bit Baobab-ed out. I’m so glad I stuck around for sunset though because it was one of those moments I won’t forget in a hurry. My journalist friend Rob and I bought some beers from the roadside and sat on a big empty veranda with a bunch of Scandinavian girls who were in Madagascar volunteering as nurses for part of their university studies. We chatted for a while, then as the sun began to set, the Baobabs began to shine a sort of red colour from one side. I walked around getting pictures from all different angles but the best photo I took was looking right down the road, as a man herded his cattle across the dirt track.”